eCommerce and Mobile Apps, An Organized Chaos Reigns Supreme!
As most other technology driven approaches, eCommerce keeps adapting & reinventing itself right from the time it came into vogue way back in the nineties. eCommerce adapts into its fold a growing number of devices right from the smart phones to the smart watches besides of course the traditional computers & laptops. The ecosystem turns into a completely new kind of commerce as it keeps growing, adding to itself the power of BI & Analytics, Mobile Technologies, Social Media, the Cloud and now even Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence & the Chatbots.
Niche technologies like the beacons offer completely different ways of fusing the physical & the digital aspects of catering to customers and offer retail experiences, B2B experiences and other B2C experiences integrated closely with the millennial world eCommerce. Specialized eCommerce apps by app development companies tap in into the psyche of the millennial user with the intent of keeping the new age shopper engaged in novel ways.
Commerce Chaos as It Evolved
Shopping on the internet is eCommerce as normally understood. The simplest definition of e-commerce states that it is the trading of services, products or goods online or over the internet. Shopping online is a done thing, a great time saver and an efficient means to procure various services or products ranging from simple products & services to on-demand services too.
And the history and chronology of eCommerce, mCommerce and the way it gets re-invented continuously becomes interesting too!
The eCommerce Timeline
Today eCommerce & mCommerce become a complete mashup to offer a new age commerce, integrated into each other seamlessly and practically so. Today, almost every major e-commerce presence on the web has a mobile app to cater to the changing expectations.
Into the Psyche of a Mobile App User
The transition of the millennials to making the smart phones as the devices of choice is an exceptional one. Spending time on mobiles and the dependency to do almost everything on these is the way of doing things today. Statistics indicate that mobile commerce is all set to touch the $150 billion mark in the US in a couple of years. The study also indicates how the conversion rates to purchase are higher by almost 25% on the mobiles than on the web.
It is then up to the companies to understand this psyche to keep the new age user engaged is a much more trickier task than judged.
The Millennial User is Forever Active on the Phone
Research & studies have indicated that on an average, an active smartphone user unlocks the phone more than a hundred times in a single day. Even on the go there are high chances of pre-shopping happening across a wide variety of categories.
General consensus is that an app is effective in capturing the necessary attention if it can be used seamlessly across devices and provides relevant & contextual information. App UX design too gains a growing importance in the quest to engage the user.
Doing it With Mobiles is Happening
It really is all about convenience and did start with banking & paying bills. Almost every service is better availed on the phone for the users today and so is shopping on the app. App development companies offer apps for retail giants, banks, utilities, ticketing which become a part of our smaller screens along with specialized apps for on-demand services like booking cabs, ordering meals and much more.
Mobile services supporting local languages are an additional advantage for customers as well as marketers and they are nothing short of a boon in geographies where the phone penetration is higher and the linguistic diversity is higher. Regions like India & Europe are classic examples for these. So when Snapdeal started offering their app in multiple regional languages in India, they struck the right chord!
Rules of Thumb for Mobile Apps for eCommerce
Right from onboarding to remaining connected with the users, mobile apps for need to follow a few rules of thumb to be on the top of the charts.
Creating the First Impression with Onboarding
The first impression is truly the last one and onboarding in mobile apps targeted towards facilitating eCommerce solutions becomes very critical in getting the user’s attention and enhancing the user experiences. Apps strive to strike the mythical balance between technology & usability and onboarding puts across the usefulness of the apps to the users.
The Best Fit for Each Using Personalization
The power of right context information is way more powerful than the same thing for all. A typical smartphone user is likely to respond more towards contextual information as part of device interaction and consequently responds better. Data gathered from the app should be able to determine the user intent & behavior patterns to present engaging information. Custom ecommerce development caters to these niches.
Word of Mobile is the New Word of Mouth with Social Media
Data from social chatter impacts the social media communities like none other. Marketers need to reinvent their strategies for the mobile apps to keep up continuous analysis gathered through the apps and strategize the way the apps connect with the users.
Making the Digital & the Physical Seamless
The millennial mobile app is responsible for strengthening the user experiences by putting things into context & making them relevant. Driven by technologies like AR, VR, AI & NLP and facilitated by approaches like the Internet of Things mobile apps should fuse the digital & the physical world.
Omnichannel the Key for User Engagement
Seamlessness across devices and mediums pushes the eCommerce experiences beyond multichannel interactions. What is delivered then is an integrated & uniform, one stop experience across channels keeping the users engaged continuously.
The Rise of Artificial Intelligence & Chatbots
Bots bring in the next disruption to the apps with voice enabled features. The conversational experiences become an integral part of the eCommerce ecosystem with the power of AI and natural language processing.
In a Nutshell
Mobile app development for eCommerce becomes a tricky business, but apps developed using specialized custom ecommerce development takes the approach forward keeping in mind a few basic norms to put this new age requirement at the forefront of all the solutions designed.
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